Sunday, December 28, 2008

Countdown to the Election I

On all of this Rick Warren Hullabaloo

So it's been a few weeks since it came out that christianist-conservative pastor Rick Warren would be giving the invocation at Barack's inauguration and now that it's more or less been flushed out by both sides of the media, I thought I'd add just about two cents worth of input.

Initially, I'll admit that I felt thrown under the bus. After so much hope, so much camaraderie, after he mentioned "gay and lesbian brothers and sisters" in his acceptance speech, I felt like once again a liberal-democrat official was leaving us behind for the sake of political efficacy. But after all of this has gone down, I feel like ultimately, this whole event will be looked at as a faux pas, on both sides.

Here's why: From what the Barack Transition Camp has said, this is a gesture of good will, something that he talked about in his speech. I can see how ol' boy thought it would be a good idea to make in-roads with the 100-something electoral votes that went to McCain. If I were a conservatron, I'd feel good about the invitation to Warren—but not anymore.

I think we (and when I say we, I mean the entirety of the "liberal media") have ruined all of Obama's good intentions by blowing this whole mess out of proportion. Any kind of good will to the conservative camp has probably been turned into a more heightened sense of us versus them.

Yes, it would have been a better choice to have, say, the pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church do the invocation at such an auspicious and momentous event in our country's history, not some middle-of-the-road, white-evangelical conservanator who was influential in the Prop 8. mess. And while those hurt feelings are there, I think we all need to just need to take a step back for a second, and trust that Barack knows what he's doing.

To quote pundit kitchen:

I think, between now and the inauguration ceremonies, I'm going to check my baggage at the door. This is going to be looked at, in a year, as a non-issue. Let's be a little more forward thinking, nu*?

*Look for a post soon called Das Fettchen's Wörterbuch, where you'll finally learn about all of those crkay words I use. Incidentally, nu is yiddish for "right?" or "don't you think?" or "what the fuck is wrong with you already won't you just do what I tell you?". We could all use a little more yiddish, I think.